


Paperback

by GeorgieGirl8



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Awkward Flirting, Awkwardness, Lawnmowing, Mischief, Suburbia, Teen Angst, but not that cute, lemonade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 06:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14743368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeorgieGirl8/pseuds/GeorgieGirl8
Summary: "The kid’s head reappears over the hedge, in profile. He stops, and two hands tucked into the bottom half of the gray shirt stretch it up to his bowed face, wiping away the sweat. He’s walking in her direction now, maybe gathering up some gear – a gas can, a duffel bag.'Want some lemonade?' she hears herself call, still lounging on the swing.He looks up, surprised. 'Yeah,' he says, no expression on his face. 'Sure.'”---I wanted to write about Betty, Jughead, a lazy suburban summer, crappy old paperback novels, and being a teenager.





	Paperback

**Author's Note:**

> This is me taking a little detour from the cute stuff I've written on here so far. As you'll see, it's different, but the warmer weather's got me thinking about high school summers and I just needed to wallow a little in some suburban teen angst. 
> 
> I hope you don't hate it!
> 
> <3

_One cup of lemon juice_

The sour.

_One cup of sugar_

The sweet.

_Mix with six cups of water._

_Serve over ice._

Setting the wooden spoon in the sink, Betty lifts her face to the warm breeze drifting in through the open kitchen window. Cicadas sing reedy afternoon songs as she pours the lemonade into a tall glass. No ice – she wants to taste the sharp, sugary flavor undiluted.

Although the porch swing is made of wood and has no cushions (“fabric cushions on outdoor furniture,” her mother has been known to sneer about other people’s choices), it’s comfortable enough for a long spell of novel reading in the humid shade.

She hears four loud successive sputters, followed by the roar and whine of a lawnmower engine. Looking up over the hedge that splits her family’s front yard from the Andrews’, she spies a lanky figure, back bent at a forty-five degree angle, shoulder blades visible through a sweaty gray shirt, struggling to push the mower across the grass parallel to the sidewalk, moving away from her.   

Her eyes drop back down to the page.

A moment later, she glances up again to see a face, scowling in concentration under some kind of gray hat, just visible over the hedge as it bobs with each effortful step, mowing towards her now. Wrestling the machine into a turn at the end of the row – she imagines; she can’t see much below his neck at this point – his blue gaze happens to flash up and land on her.

Her eyes go soft and flick left, like she hadn’t been looking at him at all. He keeps to his task.

After the next row, though she can still hear the mower, he’s moved behind the corner of her house and out of sight.

He isn’t Archie, which is sort of strange, since Archie lives there and mowing is (or was?) supposed to be one of his chores. But he is their age. And she does recognize the hat, and the face, now that she’s had a good look at it. A quiet kid who sat the back in history class, always writing. She knows he doesn’t live around here.

She’s about to dog-ear her page, her glass now empty, when there’s a sudden quiet. The mower – whose sound she guesses she’d tuned out – has stopped.

The kid’s head reappears over the hedge, in profile. He stops, and two hands tucked into the bottom half of the gray shirt stretch it up to his bowed face, wiping away the sweat. He’s walking in her direction now, maybe gathering up some gear – a gas can, a duffel bag.

“Want some lemonade?” she hears herself call, still lounging on the swing.

He looks up, surprised. “Yeah,” he says, no expression on his face. “Sure.”

\---

They drink it in silence, sitting on her front steps. Her feet are bare, her toenails robin’s-egg blue.

A black BMW pulls up to the curb in front of the house whose lawn he’s just mowed and the people inside sit there for what seems like a really long time. The glare on the windshield makes it impossible to see who it is, but Betty already knows.

Then the door opens, and they catch the sighing sounds of trailing-off laughter – male and female – which both voices quickly stifle, and a red-headed boy strides up the walk and into the house. The car drives off.

The mowing kid looks down at his glass, angling his head to get a read on the blonde girl’s expression in the corner of his eye. She tips her head back, green eyes closed, pouring the rest of her drink down her throat.

“Thanks,” he tells her, putting the glass down on the porch and getting to his feet.

“I’m Betty,” she says.

“Jughead. See you around.”

\---

Mowing lawns is his summer job, she knows, though they never actually discuss it. She’s lucky enough not to have to work, so she walks around bored and barefoot, making lemonade and reading novels. In a neighborhood of nice houses, hers is the big white house on the corner with the cherry tree out front.

“What are you reading now?” he asks from the sidewalk, pouring gas into the mower.

She’s got a knee bent and one foot up on the swing, an old novel splayed across her sun-kissed thigh, tendrils of blonde hair sticking to her dewy neck. “ _Summer of ‘42_ ,” she calls back without looking up.

Two women wearing intricate yoga pants jog off the sidewalk and around him. One pushes a large stroller.

“Huh,” he replies, turning around to pull the cord, and her eyes flick up from the book to take in the swell and sweep of his long, lean form – the broadening back; the shoulders, wide and firm under the worn shirt; the ropy arms; the strong hands. The mower starts and her eyes dart back down.

\---

They sit together on the stairs of her back porch, the condensation on their empty glasses melting into puddles in the heat. Reclined on her elbows, hands dangling off the top step, her head thrown back, Betty feels the noontime sun prickle her face.  

Three backyards away some children chase each other around a sprinkler. One is crying.

“You and Archie used to hang out, huh?”

She hesitates. Then, “yeah,” she says, her tone flat.

He leans back too, and the conversation is apparently over.

The side of his hand touches the side of hers, the tip of her little finger resting on the middle of his.

“I can take the glasses in,” he offers, his voice strangely low. “Unless—”

 _Unless what?_ She thinks about what kind of neighborhood this is, what kind of neighborhood he’s from.

“Oh,” she says, her eyes still closed, “thanks.”

She feels him push away and stand, hears him pick up the glasses and walk across the boards of the porch, hears the screen door open and slam behind him. Then she realizes he won’t know where things are. She rocks up onto her feet.

“Jug?” she calls, her eyes adjusting to the darkness of the narrow back hallway.

“Yeah?” he calls back from the kitchen, which he’s found, of course, because although it’s big, the house isn’t complicated.

“You found it?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he replies, coming around the corner towards her, his eyes probing her face.  

Their bodies are close. His shirt is damp. He smells like hot laundry, salt, machine oil, and grass. She can hear them both breathing. “Better get going,” he says, raising his palm to the side of her arm on his way through. The planes of his chest graze the tips of her breasts as he steps past her, and little shockwaves of shame and pleasure go vibrating down to her toes.

\---

She’s walking her mother’s dog around the block in the slanting pink light of early evening, her hair down and wavy after a shower. She’s put on lotion afterwards, and her skin feels cooler, soft.

She stops when she sees him raking up grass clippings on someone’s lawn. Cinnamon trots on ahead, sniffing around the sharp angles of the trimmed boxwood hedges and the gardens, which are edged to within an inch of their lives, until the retractable leash hits its limit and he’s jerked back, so he turns in circles, sniffing the same spot over and over again.  

“You’re wearing shoes,” he observes as he crouches to gather up the clippings, looking up through his lashes at her with a wry smile.

“Almost done for the day?” she asks, a hand to her brow to block the sun, her own lips curving up in response.

“Hey,” comes a sudden, loud shout from one yard over. Looking at the house next door to the one they’re standing in front of, she sees a woman, middle-aged, out on her porch. “You,” the woman says accusingly, pointing a finger, and Betty turns to look behind her. “The blonde with the dog.”

_Is this a joke?_

“Me?” Betty smiles weakly, in case it really is some kind of prank, which it must be.

“Yeah, you.” Contempt flashes in her eyes. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

_Oh. It’s not._

The muscles in her legs heat up, like she’s about to sprint, and “what?” she asks breathlessly, beginning to pant like she already has. Beside her, Jughead is frozen, his soft lips flattened into a wide line across his face.

“Whaaat?” the woman repeats in a high nasal tone, mocking Betty’s bewilderment. “Your dog is in my garden,” she yells, like it should be obvious.

Betty glances at the dog, whose front paws rest on the rocks that surround a small circular flowerbed. In the flowerbed are three weird, sparse, waxy plants whose stalks are covered in little pink bell-shaped flowers. The flowers are past their prime, edged with brown.

“And you’re standing there like an idiot, letting him run all over it. Control your damn dog.”

Reeling the oblivious and compliant Cinnamon back in with hands she wills to stop shaking, Betty keeps the woman in the corner of her eye until the front door slams shut.

“Friend of yours?” He’s trying to be flippant, but his eyes are dim, his expression hovering somewhere between beaten and primed for a fight.

“I don’t know her,” Betty replies, feeling nauseous. “See you later.”

His hand reaches out as she starts to walk, gently grabs the back of her neck, and releases it, all in the same movement. It’s a profoundly awkward gesture, but one her skin remembers vividly, replaying it on a ghostly loop all night.

\---

“You ever go swimming down at Sweetwater River?” he asks. He’s lying on his back in the grass, eyes closed.

She’s standing up on the backyard swing tied to a thick tree branch, pumping it back and forth with long, toned legs. “No, I’ve never been,” she replies, “You?”

“My dad used to take us,” he replies. Then, “you finish that book?” he asks.

“Which one?”

“The last one – _The Thorn Birds_?”

“Why, you wanna borrow it?” Her lips quirk, and though he can’t see them, he hears it in her voice.

“No,” he huffs.

“I didn’t finish it anyway. I gave up on it.”

“I’ll lend you mine.”

“I’ve already read _In Cold Blood_.”

There’s a moment’s quiet as she continues swinging and he lazily picks individual blades of grass and sets them free on the wind.

“Jump,” he tells her, and pushes himself up on his elbows.

“What?”

“Jump.”

“No thanks.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You won’t hurt yourself.”

“I could.”

“Just jump.”

She stops pumping, centering herself on the swing and bending her knees, fidgeting her hands up and down on the ropes to find the best place to hold herself, eyes trained on an imaginary spot a few feet away. Then, she lets go. It’s not a jump, exactly, but a kind of mid-air walk-off, and she lands, one foot in front of the other, the momentum of her jump working itself out in three quick steps onto the grass. She smiles and throws her arms up as if to say, _I stuck the landing. Happy now?_

Satisfied, he lies back down.

\---

“This is for you,” she says, handing him a rectangular object wrapped in a shopping bag.

“You shouldn’t have?” he says ironically, unwrapping the bag with a skeptical half-smile.

It’s a yellowed paperback copy of Wilkie Collins’ _The Moonstone,_ plucked from the piles of books in her parents’ basement.

“Never heard of this one,” he mumbles, turning it over.

“Really? It’s the first English detective novel,” she tells him. He flashes her a look, impressed. “I googled it,” she admits.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, examining the pages with delicate fingers.

“Tell me what you think,” she says, sitting on the porch swing. Moving slowly, like he’s not sure if it’s okay, he lowers himself onto the seat beside her. She’s looking down, extending her legs and examining her toes, her feet crossed at the ankle. He reads the first page and they swing together in an indiscernible rhythm.

“Hey, remember that lady from the other day? The yelling one?” he says suddenly, looking up at her, his teeth appearing between his lips.

“I do,” she says, and bites hers.

“That was… weird.”

She shakes her head. “Totally.”

“Your dog wasn’t even in that garden.”

“I don’t think he was.”

“And what _was_ that garden, anyway?” the smile had fully bloomed on his face now.

“Pretty terrible,” she giggles, turning her head and meeting his eyes. _They’re blue,_ she thinks, _like gas flames_. _Soft, but hot._

\---

The birds are chirping in the gauzy grey of sunrise and a delicious breeze is stealing through her room, flowing through her curtains, when she rolls over and wonders what time it is.

Quarter to six.

As she’s settling her cheek back onto her pillow for one last stretch of sleep, her eyes catch something sitting on her windowsill. She crosses the room and picks it up.

It’s a plant – or a piece of one, anyway.

A long, red, waxy stalk covered in browning clusters of pink bell-shaped flowers.


End file.
